Whose right to the city? An analysis of the mediatized politics of place surrounding alojamento local issues in Lisbon and Porto

Abstract

In view of the proliferation of alojamento local (short-term vacation rentals) in the major Portuguese cities of Lisbon and Porto, along with the recent transformation of the historic city centre neighbourhoods, this study explores the mediatized politics of place by analysing data sets resulting from different, but interconnected, discursive practices. At the level of governance, we examine how legislation has enabled and facilitated this transformation. We then explore the media coverage of the issues surrounding these recent changes. Finally, we focus on individual and collective stakeholder voices by analysing the various rights claims and arguments found in social media communication channels. Framing our analysis initially in Lefebvre's concept of 'the right to the city', often invoked as an argument for the promotion of justice, inclusion and sustainability in the face of urbanisation policies, we argue that a 'rights in the city' approach is better suited to gaining insight into the multiple tensions and conflicts brought about through the interlinking processes of regeneration, gentrification and touristification that affect neighbourhoods with high proportions of short-term rental accommodation, and conclude that there are many rights claimants within a seemingly unified group of stakeholders, invoking rights claims which are sometimes overlapping, but often conflicting.

Platform-mediated tourism: social justice and urban governance before and during Covid-19

“…Ryan and Ma (2020) contribution presents the example of Raglan in New Zealand, a small coastal town, in which STRs have affected several dimensions of place attachment and identity. Torkington and Ribeiro (2020) on Lisbon and Porto, as well as Muschter et al (2020) on Byron Shire in New South Wales, Australia, expand the discussion on the transformation of public spaces as centres of leisure and entertainment. Many of the authors in this collection (Cheng et al, 2020;Muschter et al, 2020;Ryan & Ma, 2020;Salerno & Russo, 2020;Torkington & Ribeiro, 2020;Wilson et al, 2020) have observed an increased perception of risk, noise and discomfort from living in places where residents can no longer recognise their neighbours.…”

“…The entanglement of urban entrepreneurialism and digital platforms has manifested itself in what Filip Stabrowski (2017) calls "spaces of domestic entrepreneurialism" -that is, homes and neighbourhoods where people have adopted an entrepreneurial attitude. As Torkington and Ribeiro (2020) show in this issue, this is especially evident among young people who are renting apartments to tourists or temporary residents as part of their flexible lifestyles, which involve the accumulation of economic and social capital for the purpose of maintaining cosmopolitan cultural identities and making individualist decisions. This view of individualism and cosmopolitanism is aligned with an imaginary of a post-work and post-capitalist society, in which automation and robotics are freeing people from the oppressiveness of capitalist working conditions to enjoy leisure activities and self-actualisation (Snape et al, 2017).…”

“…Social media provide spaces of protests. The digital amplification of activism transcends local spaces of communities by permitting remote participation of ex-residents of tourism cities and supportive outsiders (Torkington & Ribeiro, 2020;Wilson et al, 2020). An example of international movement is the Southern Europe against Touristification (SET) described by Salerno and Russo (2020), which involves local movements and researchers, claiming housing rights and preservation of local commerce, public services, jobs, and urban environments in tourist cities.…”

“…In addition, one paper examines the peer-to-peer social dining platforms VizEat and EatWith. Each study draws on explicit theories and conceptualisations: the performance approach (Christensen, 2020); moral identity theory (Farmaki et al, 2019); the social practice theoretical framework (Davies et al, 2020); GIS-based morphology of the tourist city (Celata & Romano, 2020); the short-term city (Salerno & Russo, 2020); rights to the city (Torkington & Ribeiro, 2020); social movements as transnational assemblages and politicisation through digital protests (Wilson et al, 2020); externalities, community perceptions and regulatory responses (Muschter et al, 2020); evolutionary economics and gentrification (Ryan & Ma, 2020); social representation theory (Cheng et al, 2020); and workforce income accounting (Chen et al, 2021). Through the case studies, the authors address various sustainability issues caused by the diffusion of platform capitalism in urban tourism, illustrating a crisis that the outbreak of Covid-19 has made even more evident.…”

Sustainable Tourism in Cities—Nature Reserves as a ‘New’ City Space for Nature-Based Tourism

“…Not only does overtourism cause damage to the historic part of a city and reduce the level of consumption of tourist experiences [20], but it also contributes to deteriorating the quality of life of the city inhabitants-for instance, by increasing the noise level, overcrowding and pollution, impeding access to certain public spaces and raising the cost of living [21]-and gives rise to tourism-phobia and tourism gentrification [20,22,23]. Increased tourist traffic and its negative impact on the oldest historic part of the city was noted by researchers in Polish cities such as Krakow [20] and Poznan [19], and in the world-in Berlin [17], Venice [22], Barcelona [24], Lisbon [25], and Porto [26]. Excessive tourist traffic can be prevented by sustainable urban tourism [12] the development of which is underlain by improving the functionality of the city transport infrastructure, beautifying public space and diversifying tourist traffic through expanding the cultural and gastronomic offer and creating all sorts of attractions in other parts of the city, redirecting tourist traffic to those parts, and creating new spaces attractive to tourists [27,28].…”